Will the Sun Set on the Gun & Magazine Ban?
by Ted Deeds, LEAA Chief Operating Officer

Nearly ten years ago President Bill Clinton signed into law a nationwide gun and magazine ban on the promise it would make a difference in violent crime.

A decade has passed and, once again, another of Clinton’s lies has been exposed.

The gun ban did nothing to disarm squinty-eyed gang-bangers, perverted rapists, crack-head muggers, blood-thirsty murderers or any other social misfits determined to use firearms to commit crime.

But back in September 1994, before the presidential ink dried on the newly ratified gun ban law, rank-and-file street cops, victims of crime and honest gun owners across America understood something few others did. They knew that—despite the legislative defeat and the partial loss of a basic civil right—enactment of the gun and magazine ban included a sunset provision. The law was scheduled to expire on Sept. 13, 2004. This was not the end of the fight for our rights but the beginning. Clinton’s signature simply started the clock on a 10 year countdown to restore freedom.

In little more than a year the alarm on that countdown will go off, hopefully ringing in the restoration of the Second Amendment and the demise of the Clinton gun and magazine ban.

The Promise

In the months leading up to enactment of that rights restricting law, Clinton purred for the heinous gun ban legislation with the ardor of a cat in heat, calling it “a lay-down, no-brainer.”

He relied on the propaganda promoted by gun control special interests and picked up by liberal media and solicitous pollsters.

“We need this crime bill with the assault weapons ban,” directed officials from Handgun Control.

“Sixty-four percent of Americans think gun laws are not strong enough,” drooled Los Angeles Times journalists citing a self-serving survey conducted by their own paper.

“Seventy-seven percent of Americans favor an assault-weapon ban,” echoed Gallup researchers who collaborated with USA Today.

Helping him along in the Senate and House of Representatives were the founding members of the “ban-a-gun, hug-a-thug” rhetoricians. Led by then Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY), the chief lap dog for the gun ban crowd, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), head cheerleader for Sarah Brady’s gun control factory of half-truths, Clinton took aim at the right to keep and bear arms. When the measure passed, Clinton won and our rights lost.

While lavishing praise on Schumer, Feinstein and the other politicians who voted to support the gun and magazine ban, Clinton promised the gun grab would be a significant crime-fighting tool.

“We had people put their political careers on the line hereÉwalking down the aisleÉto vote for the assault weapons ban, putting their necks on the line, afraid it might not make a difference, but it will,” he pledged.

It was a promise that would be broken.

10-years of failure

More than ten years after Washington, D.C.’s 1977 handgun ban was put in place our nation’s capital homicide rate went up. In fact, it tripled. The same failure occurred in Chicago and California when similar bans were introduced. Historically, gun bans have not worked. Part of the reason is that these gun bans only stop honest citizens from gun access. But a ban does nothing to prevent a criminal from obtaining a gun illegally, on the black market or by theft.

The Clinton gun ban, which was supposed to “restrict criminal access” to so-called assault weapons, failed in part because the guns that were banned are not so-called “crime guns.” FBI data noted that rifles of any type were used in only three percent of homicides.

This was not secret data but it was ignored.

Gun control advocates chose to sidestep those facts in their zeal to restrict our freedoms, leading clear-minded people to conclude that if the guns being banned weren’t used in crimes then the banners real aim was a cultural war on law-abiding firearms owners.

Sen. Feinstein confessed as much, but not until the measure had been passed. She told the San Diego Union-Tribune that she didn’t “doubt at all” that the so-called “assault weapons” she banned were hardly ever used in crime. “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright banÉI would have done it,” she boasted.

Sen. Feinstein’s deliberate deception of the public was not unique. Gun ban advocate Josh Sugarmann, the head of the D.C.-based Violence Policy Center, promoted the use of misleading tactics to advance restrictive gun laws.

“The semi-automatic weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusionÉcan only increase the chance of public support for restrictions of these weapons,” he wrote in a memo.

Trickery emerged as a routine policy among gun grabbers, particularly when it came to rounding up law enforcement support for the gun ban. Politically ambitious officials and special interest groups knew that street cops generally opposed more gun control.

LEAA and other police groups tried unsuccessfully to show elected officials and journalists that law enforcement support for the gun ban was wildly overstated.

But that didn’t stop the political power of Clinton and his gun ban cronies. The Clinton crowd didn’t need cops to support the gun ban they only need the appearance of law enforcement support. For example, during congressional debate on gun bans police brass used their authority to “encourage as many off-duty members as possible to attend [a gun ban photo op] in uniform and also to compel as many on-duty members to attend as manpower will allow,” according to statements uncovered by investigators.

That was a clear misuse of authority and taxpayer dollars, which led at least one Arlington County (VA) officer to file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court. The officer’s supervisors ordered him to “further a political cause against his will,” according to the suit. Officers in other states leveled similar complaints.

LEAA and many other police officers, pro-gun groups and law-abiding gun owners repeatedly shared the information with anyone who would listen. But few in the news media did.

Disgracefully, some in the news media knew what a failure gun bans had been but nevertheless kept up the drumbeat for passage of the measure because “something had to be done.”

The Washington Post, which campaigned for the ban, confessed shortly after it was enacted: “No one should have any illusions about what was accomplished (by the ban). Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control.”

Thankfully, it hasn’t led to more gun control. But it did lead to an energetic awakening of the gun rights movement, which pundits partly attribute to the defeat of Clinton’s vice president in the 2000 election. Now, hopefully, legislators will recognize that the recent downturn in crime can be attributed to tougher sentencing guidelines adopted over the years, fewer early paroles, beefed-up prosecutions of criminals and the widespread implementation of right to carry laws in nearly every state in the country.

Time to Right a Wrong

The Clinton gun and magazine ban took effect on Sept. 13, 1994. By the narrowest margin, the gun-grabbing measure passed and outlawed nearly 20 types of common, legal semi-automatic firearms and outlawed all 10-plus round magazines.

Some were banned by name and others by characteristics. For example, any semi-automatic rifle that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least two of the following: a folding or telescoping stock; a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the gun; a bayonet mount; a flash suppressor or threaded barrel; and a grenade launcher is considered an “assault weapon.” Virtually the same applied to semi-automatic handguns and shotguns.

The Clinton “Crime Bill” also banned ammunition feeding devices capable of holding more than 10 rounds. The law prohibits a private individual from possessing or transferring a so-called “large capacity ammunition feeding device” manufactured after Sept. 13, 1994.

Both bans will go away in September of 2004 unless congress votes to re-instate it. That means elected officials should do nothing and let the ban lapse. It’s the right thing to do. The Clinton ban has failed and now, a decade later, we should let this bad law expire, putting an end to the false premise that gun bans stop criminals from getting guns.

Learn more about LEAA's efforts to prevent the extension of the Clinton Gun & Magazine Ban

"Gun control advocates chose to sidestep facts in their zeal to restrict our freedoms, leading clear-minded people to conclude that if the guns being banned weren’t used in crimes then the banners real aim was a cultural war on law-abiding firearms owners. "